“The Curate’s Friend” is one of two of Forster’s coming-out stories published in The Celestial Omnibus. In “The Story of a Panic,” Pan appears in a whirlwind and rapes a young boy. In “The Curate’s Friend,” a Faun enamors Harry the Curate and becomes a life-long friend.
Telling this story long after, Harry leaves the picnic knowing that his life will be satisfied and be secret. Of course, Harry says he can never tell anyone, except, of course, in a short story such as this: “For if I breathed one word of that, my present life, so agreeable and profitable, would come to an end, my congregation would depart.”
During a typical afternoon in the Chiltern Hills, attended by Harry, Emily, a young woman Harry is presumably attracted to, Emily’s mother, and a nameless young man picnic at the top of the hill. It ought to be an ordinary picnic, but Harry is sensitive to the Roman and Saxon associations haunting the locale. The other picnickers, less sensitive than Harry, blithely go on with the picnic.
On a whim, Harry uncharacteristically shouts, “And who will stand on either hand and keep the bridge with me?” and to his surprise, a Faun in the guise of a young naked boy with horns, hooves, and a tail answers his call. When Harry begins acting strangely, his companions think he is play-acting. But in fact, Harry is having a panic attack because he surmises, “a great crisis in my life was approaching.”
When the Faun addresses Harry, “Dear priest, be placid: why are you frightened?” Harry decides to accept the Faun’s attention. Meanwhile, at the other end of the picnic cloth, Emily and the young man have paired off and are embracing. Realizing that he’s been rejected by Emily, Harry, ready to accept the love of the Faun, assures him that he will be true and never leave him.
*Pan also appears in disguise in Foster’s novel A Room with a View (1908).
See E. M Forster. “The Curate’s Friend.” (1904).” In The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories, (1911). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947; http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34089/34089-h/34089-h.htm